First off, we want to offer our genuine thanks to everyone who has picked up Battle Cry of Freedom in its first week of release. We’re so excited to see everyone’s responses to the game, and we appreciate the thoughtful feedback we’ve received. We’re a small team constantly working on making the game the best it can be. We know there are improvements to be made and we’d like to address some of the common concerns we’ve heard and our plans to fix them:
Optimization and graphics performance:
We know this is a prominent concern and we are hard at work making improvements. Over the last few days we’ve already implemented patches (changelog Below) and we plan to continue releasing client side patches to improve overall performance. This is something we’ll likely never stop working on, but we will try to get the game running well on most systems. We also intend to decrease memory usage.
Melee animations:
Reworking the melee animations is something we’ve been vocal about wanting to improve after release, we’re hoping that we will have the funds soon to hire an animator so we’ll have someone working exclusively on the animations.
Melee mechanics:
Melee is an ongoing discussion with the community and we intend to stick as close to the Napoleonic Wars formula as possible. We have a dedicated melee feedback channel on our Discord, so anyone with melee related feedback is more than welcome to post there. We do read the responses and reply to them.
Toxicity and racially insensitive language in voice comms:
Sadly this is something that can happen with VOIP, nevertheless we try as best we can to stay on top of it. We want this to be a welcoming and friendly community for all and we take a hard stance against any racist or otherwise inappropriate comments. We are getting more and more admins on board (in various different time zones), to prevent those things from happening.
Anyone can report another player on our Discord, so if you see or hear someone spewing racist garbage around, we invite you to report the player there.
Player count in servers:
We take pride in our 500 man server, but we recognize the player count isn’t always that high. As Battle Cry of Freedom is a new game, the community is just starting to grow and we hope to continue that trajectory of high player counts. However not all players want to play on the same server so it can be difficult to fill the servers with 500 players at all times. Regardless, there are plenty of players on various different official and community servers.
For the real large scale experience, we suggest joining one of the community organized events/linebattles. Event details are often posted in the Discord.
Long reloading times for weapons:
We recently reduced reload time of the weapons slightly, but to preserve the historical accuracy we don't intend to reduce it any further. However, there’s a server setting for it now, so any community that dislikes it can tweak it to their liking.
No proper tutorial, hard for newcomers to pick up:
We agree that Battle Cry of Freedom can have a steep learning curve for new players. We plan to develop an in-game tutorial at some point, unfortunately it’s a bit difficult to implement a single player tutorial into a multiplayer game.
We have been adding more and more tooltips as well as small quality of life features to the game, such as little pop-ups on the bottom of the screen that give you more information on what you can do, or that give you feedback on various things such as killing/hitting enemy players etc.
Update Changelog
Over the past few days we have pushed a series of smaller hotfixes and patches, introducing a few new features, but mostly improving performance and fixing bugs. Here is the full changelog:
Version 220501D
New Features:
- Reworked cannon sight system, you can now manually move the sight up and down with Q and E. Check the inside of the limber chest for what angle you need for what distance.
- Added fire out of line punishment functionality, you can enable it through the admin settings.
- Added notification for loosing ammo.
- Added automatic spawn opening in respawn modes. Toggle above the list of spawns turns this off.
- Added notifications for hitting and killing players. Option in misc to turn this off.
- Hitting tab while in the chat menu cycles the selected chat button.
- Added the ability to limit what companies are playable in your server using the AllowedCompanies.ini
- Added the ability to use /cmd (command) for senior admins in server. The commands are typed the same way as in the config file. Not all commands can be changed after server start.
- Added notification for Battle and Commander Battles when dead and spectating.
- Added popup if you hit fight while previewing a different troop than the one you have selected.
- Added a new capture point to Cold Harbor map.
Changes and fixes:
- Reduced memory usage by 1.5gb.
- Various performance improvements regarding Pioneer works such as earthworks, gabions etc.
- Various performance improvements regarding Ammunition crates and Limber Chests.
- Improved performance of point lights.
- Improved performance of a number of Particle Effects.
- Improved performance of all weapons.
- Improved performance of far distance Player Meshes.
- Improved performance of the VOIP system on the Client CPU.
- Fixed that VOIP only worked up to 255 players.
- Changed Gatling Gun Sights. Less realistic, but should be easier to aim down sights now.
- Fixed several broken Cannons.
- Improved performance of all Limber Buckets on all Limbers (But now some are floating in place, GG)
- Fixed a bunch of string typos.
- Fixed string issue in polls.
- Changed the help text for map editor.
- Random troop button should no longer preview modded troops if they aren't allowed.
- Fixed favoriting in server browser.
- Fixed game mode drop down in server browser.
- Made server browser not be as performance intensive when updating.
- Fixed achievements not being awarded.
- Fixed an issue on where you could bypass spectator limitations.
- Fixed an issue with the selection box grabbing props behind the camera.
- Can no longer use voip button while typing a chat message.
- Fixed siege defenders lives in medley not being read in config.
- Fixed broken Whitworth Gun Limber
- Fixed that the 6pndr Limber Chest was inside another Limber Chest.
- Changed size of the Bridge Capture point on River Crossing map.
- Fixed that the CS Hospital Steward healed less than its US counterpart.
- Fixed that some Ammunition Crates would randomly glow at times.
- Reduced build point cost of Sapper Spawns.
- Increased build point cost of Lanterns.
- Slightly increased accuracy of the Scoped Whitworth Rifle.
- Increased damage of the Scoped Whitworth Rifle by 20%.
- Fixed broken collision on one of the Wooden Shacks.
- Fixed an error in gear menu.
- Player names now no longer twitch when the player is rotating.
Again, we thank everyone who has supported Battle Cry of Freedom, new players and old, and we are committed to implementing improvements in the coming months and beyond. If you have any specific questions or feedback, feel free to message us on Discord or post in the Steam discussion thread.
We hope to see you on the battlefield!
/Flying Squirrel Entertainment
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1358710/Battle_Cry_of_Freedom/